`American Dream' Requires No Taste

GARY STEIN Commentary

Personally, I think it's great that somebody like Gennifer Flowers can have her very own book and become a big celebrity and do book-signings in malls.

She epitomizes the "American Dream."Trust me, if somebody like Gennifer Flowers can do this, anybody can do it. Even you.

Friday, I ran into Bill Clinton's kiss-and-teller at Waldenbooks in the Pembroke Lakes Mall.

The folks at the mall said she sold maybe 30 to 35 books in an hour-and-a-half signing. I counted less. Either way, the folks in South Florida showed they have some class.

For those who didn't make it to the book signing, and found better ways to spend $19.95, here is the Cliff's Notes version of Passion and Betrayal:

"I slept with Bill. I slept with Evel Knievel. Doesn't make me a bad person. Here is the nightie that Bill liked to rip off me.

"Hillary has a big tush. Bill manipulated me. My name is Gennifer with a G."

There. I saved you 20 bucks.

You're welcome.

She can teach you plenty

Don't take any of that the wrong way.

I believe this is a great country when someone like Gennifer Flowers can sleep with some famous people and make money writing, "All that luscious verbal and visual foreplay, and yet we'd hardly touched.

"Now I wanted to feel his touch so much I could almost feel his hands on my skin."

And that's only in the prologue.

Flowers comes across just as salty in person. In a way, she reminds me a little of Kathy Willets with a better reference list.

Not that I didn't learn plenty from talking to Gennifer.

I learned, for example, that she is loved by collectors.

"An autographed copy of Penthouse [featuring you-know-who) is worth $2,000," she told me. She had a straight face when she told me that.

I learned that she doesn't like hecklers, particularly one woman who came up near Flowers and said that she and her book were "disgusting and appalling."

Flowers asked to have the woman removed. She told me - again, with a straight face - that's the first time anybody acted like that on her entire book tour.

"She was hoping the TV cameras were on," Flowers said of the heckler, "So she could show her ass all over Florida."

I also learned she is not worried if her book hurts Bill Clinton's re-election chances.

"If it damages him ... nobody made him take that instrument out and march with the band," she said.

I beg you, don't ask for a translation.

Taste? Who needs taste?

Again, don't take this wrong. Gennifer is proving that class means nothing when it comes to making a buck. And isn't that the '90s version of the "American Dream''?

In her book, she refers to Hillary Clinton as a "fat frump" with "a big fat butt."

And "surely her brains didn't offset her looks."

Like I said, good taste doesn't count for diddly in the '90s.

Sad to say, Gennifer and I didn't get along famously. When I asked her to explain her complaint that the liberal media had done a hatchet job on her, she snapped back, "Read my book. I'm tired of telling the story."

I can understand. You'd probably have a bit of a short temper too, if not many people were lining up to buy your trashy memoirs. ("Malls at noon are the worst place [for book-signings)," Flowers explained, sort of).

But hey, you should have a book. Don't worry about taste. And then you, too, can become a nationwide celebrity.

Like I said, if Gennifer can do it ...

Local columnist Gary Stein is published on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.